1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for the timed feeding of fish into fish processing machines, in particular into conveying means of said machines, which conveying means are equipped with receiving troughs or entrainers and supply the fish to a processing station of said processing machines such as a decapitation device.
For processing fish, particularly large quantities of fish also called bulk fish, used predominantly are processing machines which process the fish with a semiautomatic or fully automatic procedure, in order to produce highly varied, marketable consumer products. In processing of this type, aside from the effort to increase the level of quality of the product, the economy of the productive processes plays a decisive roll. This has led to the presently common, high-performance feeding rate and yield or output for which the processing machines are designed, and to the proven concepts, which aim at automatic feeding of these machines. An apparatus of this type must also position the fish uniformly, because the processing machines to be fed usually require such uniform positioning of the fish. It is understandable that ensured function of such a process presupposes fish of perfect quality. This, however, is seldom present, so that manual feeding is still unavoidable.
2. Prior Art
Apparatus with certain elements of the subject matter of the invention are known from the prior art publications. E.g., an apparatus for positioning and supplying fish can be taken from DE 36 08 320 A1, in which a turntable is used followed by two essentially tangentially directed, oscillating advancing grooves. The grooves are arranged such that they advance the fish located therein with the head leading. Therefore, fish supplied into one of the grooves in a disorderly manner with regard to head-tail position are conveyed, according to head position, in both directions of the oscillation thrust, so that a number of the fish arrive at the turntable and are transferred to the other groove via a 180.degree. turn.
Further, known from DE-GM 70 45 096 is a device for timed feeding of fish processing machines. There, a star feeder is used, which rotates about a horizontal axis and has radial, open pockets for receiving flat fish. The fish are inserted into the pockets with the tail end leading and leave these, following a rotation of the star feeder of 180.degree., with the head leading.
With these known concepts, it is not possible to achieve a sufficiently high level of feeding performance with such machines, which are intended for mass production.
3. Objects of the Invention
It is, therefore, the main object of the present invention to suggest an improved apparatus for obtaining the high performance non-mechanical (manual) feeding required in view of the high yield of modern processing machines.
It is a further highly important object of the invention to suggest an apparatus creating the least possible physical stress on the operating personnel and thus increase the non-mechanical performance without increasing the stress, respectively.